Minneapolis Weekend

DH and I decided to take a trip to Minneapolis for a short weekend trip and to hit up a Twins game. In the back of our minds, we knew the Vikings were home the same night as well. We thought about scalping tickets, but on our way up to the cities, we found some on Craigslist at 10:00 AM. The guy told us to meet him at a liquor store to pick them up at 1:00. Lets see here, our first ever Craigslist purchase and its going to go down in a liquor store?! We were a little bit leery but at least it was still light out, and if it looked too shady we were going to just skip. Fortunately, this was a HUGE liquor store in Apple Valley. It was seriously the nicest one we have been in. So since the vikings tickets panned out, we were on our way to hit up BOTH games! Here are some pictures from the Twins game.

And here are some pictures from the Vikings game. We ended up walking from Target Field to the dome since it was only about a mile and it took us about 20 minutes to walk.

After the game it was time to finally hit up our hotel. We were super tired, so we were super excited to find out how nice our hotel actually was. We stayed at the Double Tree by Hilton and the best part is, they give you warm chocolate chip cookies upon check in! We were pleasantly surprised to find a super comfy king sized bed, a sleeper sofa, 40" flat screen TV, a chair, desk, and a single brew coffee machine.

The next day we hit up IKEA and bought Macyn her birthday present and Christmas present. Its nice to get some shopping done when stores aren't so crazy! This trip was kind of unique for use. We are usually big planners and this was a last minute thought. We decided to go to the Twins game on Tuesday (game was Saturday) and we booked our hotel Wednesday night. The hotel was kind of hard to find because there was SO much stuff going on in the cities that weekend - Twins, Vikings, Lynx, State Fair, Renaissance festival. So I wanted to stay under $100 for sure for hotels, and most of them were completely full. The only ones I found was the Super 8 by the MOA and the Hilton one we stayed at. The rooms ended up being the same price at both places, so we opted for the Hilton instead.

We also bought our right field line tickets off the Twins website for $39 each. We got our 20 yard line lower level tickets to the Vikings game for $25 each. (Face value was $122!) I guess sometimes it does pay to procrastinate a little. If we would have planned all this much earlier, it would have been a lot more expensive. All in all, it was a great weekend, but if I were to do it all again, I would opt for going to one game Saturday and one game Sunday. All the games in one day was almost too much. Maybe next year!

Sunday Best

This week, Macyn featured her new white church shoes, brown leggings, and a dress from Mexico that she received as a baby gift. You may have remembered this same one from her 9 Month photos. Gotta love a dress that later turns into a shirt!

Family Portrait

The other night while Macyn was coloring, she was drawing different sets of scribbles saying, "Mommy!"   "Daddy!"   "Buddy!" I then asked her where Mommy was, and she points to the scribbles. She proceeds to point out where Daddy & Buddy are as well. As a result, this is our first family picture by Macyn. This one definitely made the refrigerator.

Sweet Corn

We went out to my grandpa's farm and picked sweet corn. And all I can say is I am definitely NOT a farm girl. I do not enjoy picking the corn itself, but I do enjoy eating it. Here is how Macyn eats hers:

First, blow on the corn to cool it off.

Second, blow on it some more to make sure the temperature is just right

Third, enjoy!

22 Months

Our big girl is 22 months already! Hard to believe she is getting that old. She refused to sit in her rocking chair for her month picture, but she sure wanted to sit in her baby stroller instead! She looks a little crazed, but this was the one and only picture I got of her. The rest of the time was her running around the house and pushing her stroller down the hallway.

She really likes playing babies, and I think at daycare she gets to be the baby with the older kids. I say this because, she will often sit on my lap, hand me her sippy, and say, "baby." That means she wants you to hold her like a baby and feed her sippy like a bottle. She does this very often and always at the dinner table. "baby," means she wants you to feed her because she doesn't want to do it herself.  I think this stems from her switching daycare rooms. She is now the youngest by 4 months in her room. All the older kids call her their "baby." She also now goes to an in home for 2 days a week as well. One of the kids she plays with there is a 5 year old girly girly. I think those two have a good time together!

Its hard to believe that my daughter would be a girly girl (if you look at her mom)! She enjoys using lotion and putting in on her legs. She also likes to have her toenails neatly painted and her hair in a pony tail or curling it. Friday she was adamant to wear her dress to daycare. She is definitely all girl!

Her bedtime has unfortunately gotten pushed back by an hour or so. After a week of getting up before 5:00 am something had to be done. Its okay, though, I enjoy the extra time with her. It just makes doing other tasks a little more difficult! I now bring her to and from daycare since DH goes to work by 7:00 am every morning. This always causes problems dropping her off because she doesn't want me to leave, but seeing her run to me when I walk in the door saying, "mommy, mommy!" melts my heart!

Her vocabulary is improving daily. I think its because we have been more strict with when she gets her paci. She jabbers all the time and will randomly say things. I asked her what she wanted for her birthday and she says "BIRTHDAY!" loud and clear. Yesterday she was rocking and she goes, "rocky, rocky, bye bye!" Or she will run out into the living room and go "HI DADDY!" The best thing we taught her so far? "Go Bike ings!" (Go Vikings)

Its amazing how much stuff she picks up on. She also is going through the "No, ME!" stage. She does this with everything and usually ends up in a meltdown. She is definitely Miss Independent. I love her big personality, even though it can be extremely challenging. This sometimes leads to time outs. The other night we told her to go to her room. She gets up off the couch, goes to her room, and fusses. A little bit later I saw her sneak out and peek around the corner to see if we are watching her. It was so cute and funny at the same time. Its hard to stay mad at her because they are so innocent!

That's pretty much it for now without me rambling on too much. Shes such a sweet, little girl with a big personality. We love her so much!

Status Updates, Updates

Since I have been absent on here for the entire month of August, I thought I would update you as to what I have been up to....through my Facebook status updates. Here we go:

August 3 at 9:52pm Rock'n my new do

I got a new haircut - asymmetrical. New hair color - Mocha brown with red highlights. New hair feather - yellow and black. Go Hawkeyes!

August 4 at 6:38am I think child needs to quit waking up at 4:45 and 5:30, respectively.

Peanut went through a week phase of getting up around 2:00 am and getting up at 4:30-5:30 for the day. This made for a crazy, crabby, stressed out Mama! Thank goodness she is back to sleeping through the night....knock on wood.

August 4 at 8:59pm Ready to pack for a fun-filled wedding weekend!

My best friend from high school got married and I spend all Friday afternoon hanging out. Then Friday night we had rehearsal and went bar hopping. Saturday was the wedding with some more partying. Sunday was brunch a day of recovery. Thankfully, Macyn stayed with her grandparents both nights so we could enjoy the weekend a little more. It was a perfect day for a perfect wedding. I had such a blast!

 August 7 at 3:11pm I would like to sum up my awesome weekend, but a lot of it would be pretty inappropriate, so I will just say I had a blast and it was AMAZING! Congrats, Amber & Todd!

Let's put it this way - what happens on the party bus, stays on the party bus. Just kidding. I just came to realization, I'm too old for these crazy weekends. Haha

August 11 at 7:43pm I asked Macyn to say Obama. With much enthusiasm, she says, "OH BA BA!"

This was in reference to Macyn picking up the telephone and us telling her to tell the presidential calls to stop! We asked her to say Obama. However, she now says, "No Ba Ba" for Obama.

Friday at 5:25pm Craving Pizza Ranch, but I will probably have to pass - too dang expensive!

I did end up passing on the ranch...until Saturday when we went out for my MIL's birthday. I am proud to say that this was the first time we had gone out to eat in the month of August. We are extremely short on money this month since DH started a new job and only gets paid monthly. No paychecks from him until September. Lovely. Welcome to single-income-ville.

Friday at 8:46pm Didn't expect to catch a 15" around snapping turtle tonight. I much would have preferred a 4" sunfish.

We decided to go fishing since the Solunar calendar said it was an excellent time to fish. We had a lot of bites and were just about ready to go. I didn't have much worm left on my hook - literally, a skin of a worm. I cast out and all of a sudden my bobber sinks to the bottom of the pit. I reel in and I see this GINORMOUS mouth and I was thinking I caught a big carp or something. As soon as I saw it was a turtle I yelled at DH to help. However, he didn't realize how big this thing was and nonchalantly walked over and said "HOLY COWS!" I ran away, but then I realized turtles don't run so I had nothing to worry about. DH got the turtle on shore and then my line broke. That thing was HUGE! We didn't have a net so we didn't have time to get a picture. All I can say was, that was a big snapper with big teeth. I stay away from those things!

Friday at 9:16pm Is it too early to start making a Christmas list? Hm...

#1 item on my list this year - a coffee/espresso machine. The kind that you just put the individual pod into and it brews it for you. I want to be a french vanilla coffee snob and this will be the first step.

So that's what I've been up to lately. Super busy. Hopefully I start kick my blog writing into gear soon!

Slow Shutters

We went to Falls Park the other night and I snapped some pictures of the falls. I took my first one on "auto" mode and the color wasn't so great. I then decided to put it on the manual setting and adjust everything myself - ISO, white balance, F-stop, shutter speed, etc. And then I remembered that you can make the falls themselves look dreamy when you keep the shutter open longer. I went ahead and tried it and I came out with some great results! These pictures were taken about 9:15 PM without much light, so I really should have had a tripod. But I just worked with what I had.

For those of you who don't know what a shutter speed is - its how long the shutter is open and how much light is let in. You know when sometimes your pictures are blurry if you don't use a flash? What most likely happened is the shutter was open longer, and you moved, therefore making your pictures blurry. I always use a rule of thumb speed of 1/60 to prevent blurred pictures if you aren't using a tripod. If its anything slower than that, they will blur. I lowered my shutter down soooooo slow to make the falls look blurred.

The reason this works is, since the water is moving, it blurs the falls. Since everything else is still, it doesn't blur that part (unless you move the camera). It turns out for some neat pictures for sure. Like I said, I didn't have a tripod so mine aren't perfect, but you get the idea!

Auto setting - not so good!

Manual setting - slow shutter speed

Blurred water, clear rocks!